Manga: Review of Sunny and Discussions of Other Works by Taiyo Matsumoto

The Comics Alternative is weekly podcast focusing on the world of alternative, independent, and primarily non-superhero comics. (There's nothing wrong with superhero comics. We just want to do something different.) New podcast episodes become available every Wednesday and include reviews of graphic novels and current ongoing series, discussions of upcoming comics, examinations of collected editions, in-depth analyses of a variety of comics texts, and spotlights on various creators and publishers. The Comics Alternative also produces "special feature" programs, such as shows specifically dedicated to creator interviews, webcomics, on-location events, and special non-weekly themes and topics.

The Young Ones

This month on the manga show, Shea
and Derek discuss the recently completed, Sunny, as well as other works by Taiyo
Matsumoto. Late last year VIZ Media published the six and final
volume of Sunny, a series that began in December 2010
in the original Japanese (published in Monthly Ikki), and
has been coming out in English translation since the first
volume in May 2013. This is a title that the guys have been wanting
to discuss for some time, but they decided to hold out until the
everything was wrapped up so that they could look at the series in
its entirety.

This is a realistic, evenly paced
drama about a group of orphans and outsiders residing at Star
Kids Home, a foster home that serves as a refuse for children
without family or whose parents do not have the means, or even
the interest, in caring for them. Although this narrative functions
with an ensemble cast, Shea and Derek feel that the de facto
protagonist here is Haruo, an angry, troubled kid whose parents
remain aloof. The series unfolds as Haruo interacts with the other
children at the home, each of whom gets ample attention in the
text, and the adults who try to make things manageable for
them. The one central refuge in their lives, a space of safety
and imagination, is a derelict Nissan Sunny 1200 that sits
abandoned in the front yard of the Star Kids Home.

The guys spend most of the episode
mapping out the various characters and their struggles
in Sunny, but they also take the time to discuss
other manga by Matsumoto, including Blue Spring(the original
collected in 1993, and translated into English in
2004), Gogo Monster (2000/2009), the
untranslated Takemitsuzamurai(2006-2010), and
especially the Eisner Award-winning Tekkon Kinkreet, which originally
ran from 1993-1994 and was collected as a one-volume English
translation in 2007. As Shea points out, this is one of their
favorite manga creators -- for both guys -- and they wanted to use
this episode to dig deep into his art.

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About the Podcast

Two guys with PhDs talking about comics! The Comics Alternative is weekly podcast focusing on the world of alternative, independent, and primarily non-superhero comics. (There's nothing wrong with superhero comics. We just want to do something different.) New podcast episodes become available every Wednesday and include reviews of graphic novels and current ongoing series, discussions of upcoming comics, examinations of collected editions, in-depth analyses of a variety of comics texts, and spotlights on various creators and publishers. The Comics Alternative also produces "special feature" programs, such as shows specifically dedicated to creator interviews, webcomics, on-location events, and special non-weekly themes and topics.